


all that remains is a wooden cross

by MathildaHilda



Series: until the end of infinity [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Non-Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-07 21:26:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20460233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathildaHilda/pseuds/MathildaHilda
Summary: Fear is the strongest weapon of all.





	all that remains is a wooden cross

**Author's Note:**

> Title from;
> 
> "where his body fell to earth like paper:  
all that remains is a wooden cross,
> 
> wildflowers on the side of a highway.  
I’ve been trying to go home my whole life—
> 
> my mother tracing my face,  
my fingers. Trying to find my father
> 
> in the country he left her. I was home there.  
Longer & longer, I belong nowhere.
> 
> Longer & longer, I belong nowhere  
in the country he left her. I was home there,
> 
> my fingers trying to find my father.  
My mother tracing my face,
> 
> I’ve been trying to go home my whole life—  
wildflowers on the side of the highway,
> 
> all that remains is a wooden cross  
where his body fell to earth like paper."
> 
> \- Chelsea Dingman

It’s a whisper of a word.

It’s a whisper, almost a prayer. Either way, he knows. Knows, that the word – in that moment, in that tone of voice – means fear.

The stone – a brilliant green – brought him gasping back into the world, wound gone in a moment that has never existed, yet still _has_ existed. It has brought him back to the world, only to help pull him away from it again.

“Thor?” Slips past his lips, his fingers finding wounds that has been there since the beginning.

It becomes a whisper of a word, strangled in a throat constricted with the fear that grips him vicelike, once the god turns to him; blue and brown trapped in confused grief.

Loss.

He has just enough time to turn toward the next voice, calling for him from the green lushness of a hidden world.

He has enough time.

And, then he has no time.

~

She has almost broken through the last trees, torn leaves from their low positions and crushed twigs underfoot.

Her knuckles are torn and near enough broken inside her gloves, her head spins in the heat and exhaustion and with what is, without a doubt, a concussion.

She thinks she tears out from beneath another cluster of branches, but the dust collecting in her palms tells her of other stories.

She doesn’t know which stories just yet, but soon enough, those stories are her own.

She hears Barnes.

Then, she hears nothing at all.

~

The air can’t be good to breathe.

Space is nothing but a toxic wasteland at times, and right now, his lungs are burning.

He coughs, spits blood on the ground, and looks back up just in time to see Strange’s strange eyes.

The man looks at him, looks to the kid, then back again.

The words that come, cuts off any form retort he had planned;

“I’m sorry.”

Quill looks at the newcomer, arm still around Mantis, when the blue woman raises a hand.

He almost thinks she’s aiming to ask a question, but she stares at the hand in silence. Doesn’t twist it or turn it, to see how bad the damage had been dealt. No, she stares, folds her fingers into a fist, and he almost stumbles when bits of it starts to fall away.

She doesn’t look away from the black carnage that had once been a hand until it has reached well past her shoulder.

She only has time to look to Drax, barely time to turn her head to the others. She’s gone in less than a breath.

Maybe, her raised hand was in goodbye.

He coughs again, hand covering his mouth in an attempt to stifle it. It doesn’t work. It comes out ragged and dry, no matter what attempts he makes at making it stop.

He cocks his head to the side when the wizard looks at him with eyes that shines with something not altogether different from when he offered up the stone, in return for his life.

The kid says something, but time isn’t on their side anymore. He can’t see him past the smokescreen of loss.

Strange is terrible at bargaining, he doesn’t have time to say.

His life is the bargaining chip of the universe, but it is not enough, this time around, to save it.

~

She flips the switch.

She flips it back.

The portal shines with quantum lights and hums at a pace where everything makes sense.

Nothing makes sense.

Not now, when nothing but a capsule of encompassed light falls through, almost shattering on the ground.

The glass splinters a little, cracks like spiderwebs in its sides.

There’s some specks of dust, silently floating away on the wind.

There’s a sudden roar of sound from down the street.

Nothing makes sense, anymore.

~

He folds the wings back inside the case, leans against a tree to catch his breath, and hears his name.

He barely has enough time to turn around and see Rhodey, waving an arm in the air.

He waves back, just in time for the wind to blow through. He blinks, and the wind is gone.

He blinks, and Rhodey’s nowhere to be seen.

~

He stands still for a moment, hand still clasped as if though it still held the axe tight.

Hand still clasped, stretched out in front of him, as if though he can catch Steve before he falls.

But Steve falls turned the other way, shields melting away from his arms and eyes searching for the source of his name.

Barnes – the White Wolf, he’d heard mention of while he chased Chitauri through the greenery – stands stock-still, looking as if though he moves too much, the moment will become real.

Barnes has dropped his gun, bullets spent, and metal left to rust in the dirt. Nothing seems to matter to him, not anymore.

The clasped hand is the first to go.

He’s not even sure Barnes knows that he, now, has gone too.

~

The dust vibrates at a frequency so closely tuned to what courses through her veins and paints the world red.

So, she feels it around her long before she sees the warriors tearing through the jungle with their arms held high and their mouths open in silent screams.

She doesn’t think that it hurts, it doesn’t look like it.

No, maybe it doesn’t hurt. But, she thinks that the fear of it, is worse than any pain in the whole of the known universe.

She thinks this, at least. Because she refuses to believe that there is a pain stronger than the one she currently holds in her own two hands.

Vision has long since turned gray, resting in her lap not too unlike Pietro had when the nightmares were terrible and there were no walls between them.

Her powers were built, given, _gifted_.

Maybe, her pain is, too.

~

The machine falls, and there’s no one inside it.

It shatters once it reaches the ground, limbs falling from torso from too much power pushing out from the inside.

It almost flattens him, until his reflexes kick in and he’s away from it in less than a step.

When the arm falls off by its shoulder, there’s nothing but black sand.

He hears sound, whimpers and whispers, and sees a tree clad in the small puff of smoke that was left behind. The tree sounds so much like a child when it cries, claws at the ground for something that was created to never have existed.

He stares at the scene for a moment, the general still coating the palm of his hand.

Banner, or the Hulk, must have torn a way into the clearing, trees missing from an unmistakable path.

Fear is the strongest weapon of all.

He bows his head in silence, the young tree still grabbing at the ground, when he hears Barnes’ all-too familiar swears from deeper inside.

~

“Don’t forget to breathe.” He jokes, and adjusts her elbow. She’s as taut as the arrow she’s knocked, and she smiles to let the air out.

She lets the arrow fly. It hits its mark.

Mom asks a half-question. Nate screams. Cooper is eerily silent.

Lila’s shoulders are covered in a fine layer of dust.

Lila desperately tries to breathe.


End file.
